The Waiting Room
by DeadPigeon
Summary: This short story reflects Castles state of mind during the three months Kate never called.  This was originally posted in my "Three Little Words" challenge. Companion chapeter "Revelations" has been added.
1. The Waiting Room

**The Waiting Room**

It's been nearly three months and I'm still trapped in that damn room. I can feel the  
>fluorescent lights as they glint off every non porous surface and stab into the back<br>of my eyes. The glare illuminates the hundred and ninety two tiles that cover the  
>floor. I can still see the festering chip in tile number eighty two and the Rorschach<br>stain on the tile near my left foot. Which one was that? Oh yeah, that was number  
>one hundred and fifteen. I can even smell the acrid disinfectant they use when they<br>mop the floor. It's a special blend I'm sure, made just for us visitors to mask the smell  
>of death. When did they mop the floor? I never saw them actually mop it, but I knew<br>they did. They cleaned up the coffee I spilled. I hadn't realized how badly my hands  
>were shaking that day until Alexis handed me that cup. It made her cry. I haven't<br>touched a cup since.

I haven't done much of anything since Kate said those three little words to me. They  
>weren't the three words I'd been hoping to hear from her since the moment I found<br>out she'd live. "I'll call you." She said. I walked out of her hospital room and found  
>myself back in the waiting room. Sure, I got into my car and drove home. But when<br>I opened my front door, there I was in another waiting room.

Everything I drink tastes like the sterile water I sipped from Styrofoam cups. Everything  
>I eat tastes like the bland protein bars I lived on from the vending machines, sustenance<br>for sustenance sake. I thought I could at least escape into my bedroom, but my bed now  
>feels like the small chair that folded out into an even impossibly smaller bed. I toss and<br>turn and wake up in a knot. It's not entirely caused by the imaginary bed, but more by  
>the dream that I've had every night since the day she nearly died in my arms.<p>

It's the day of the funeral again, all bright and green and beautiful, too beautiful for a  
>funeral. Funerals are supposed to be somber, and somber means a cold grey sky and<br>the biting mist of rain that chills down to the bone. Not this. The sun is laughing at us in  
>our black sackcloths and I feel a trickle of sweat as it runs down my spine. The eulogy<br>is beginning, but I find myself distracted, something is different. The words sacrifice,  
>partner and friend bring me back to the moment and I wonder why Esposito is giving<br>the eulogy. Kate is supposed to be giving the eulogy, that's what's different. I try to  
>look for her but I can't now because I'm being ushered to the podium. I'm not prepared.<br>I'm not supposed to speak. My suit is sweltering as I find myself reciting a poem. The  
>words come out of their own accord, and it isn't until the last refrain that I realize<br>I'm reciting Oscar Wilde's _Requiescat._

_Peace, peace; she cannot hear  
><em>_Lyric or sonnet;  
><em>_All my life's buried here  
><em>_Heap earth upon it._

Why had I chosen that? Why not Housman, or Sir Walter Scott? People were staring  
>and I seemed to be crying, uncontrollably. Something was still wrong, but I didn't know<br>what, not until I turned away from the podium and saw the massive granite headstone  
>and the name carved into it. It wakes me every time.<p>

A least it's eight o'clock and not four o'clock in the morning as I sit here on my couch again  
>in this "waiting room of a world" and try to glean some meaning from what she said that<br>day. One phrase always seems to repeat itself over and over in my head.

"I just need a little bit of time."

Time for what? Time to recover? To get her hair done? Time for a little less of me and a little  
>more of Josh? My own mother called me a cuckold the other day. She said it was my "fetish".<br>When had the word cuckold abandoned Shakespeare to become a fetish? She embarrassed  
>me and left me at a loss for words. I had no reply. She was right. Here I was waiting for a<br>woman who was off living her life and having sex with some other guy while I patiently watched  
>and waited from the wings. What else did that make me? A fool? That word doesn't do this<br>justice. A stalker? That's going overboard. Cuckold. The new definition seemed to be a perfect  
>fit. When and how did I let my self become this…this, this thing? My waiting room suddenly felt<br>like a prison and I knew that it was time. I grabbed my cell phone and called the only person I  
>knew who could help me escape.<p>

"Gina, about that book signing you wanted me to do…"


	2. Revelations

**Revelations**

Kate was mad. The three months of peace and tranquility she had accrued at her fathers  
>cabin had been used up in a ten minute argument she'd just had with him in her apartment.<br>Why did he come over? She told him not to come over, and why did he have to say those  
>things? They may be true, but they didn't help her, they only made things worse. She could<br>still hear his parting words echoing around inside her head.

"No man is an island Katie, try not to forget that."

What did he mean by tossing that oft quoted line from John Donne at her, especially after  
>she yelled at him to <em>just go! <em>And what the hell did Donne's line really mean, for that matter?  
>She couldn't remember. She'd read his essay in her college English lit class, but she never<br>really cared for 16th century literature. She found most of its writing tinted with whatever  
>religious furor its authors were lent. Damn stupid phrase. She wanted it out of her head.<p>

Kate was always one to focus her rage, and right now John Donne became her focal point.  
>It took nearly a half hour but she finally found her old textbook in a storage bin buried in the<br>back of her hall closet. She opened the book to its appendix and quickly found Donne's name  
>and the essay she was looking for, Meditation XVII. She flipped to page 186 and started<br>reading from the beginning, stopping when she reached the words that had offended her.  
>She read them carefully.<p>

_No man is an island, entire in itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a  
>clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if<br>a manor of thy friend's or thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved  
>in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. <em>

Well shit. She thought she was being so damn clever. She was going to have a laugh and snub  
>her nose at her dad and at Donne's dated old world notions…but she couldn't. The words pierced<br>her heart instead; pierced it in the exact same place the bullet had, and made it ache. There in black  
>and white was confirmation of what she had suspected during her isolation at the cabin. She would<br>never be alone. The very fabric of her life was interwoven into the lives of her friends, family and  
>co-workers. Only now did she realize how her death would have ripped it apart. She could only hope<br>that her running away hadn't created a hole that was too large to patch. How could she have been  
>so stupid?<p>

Her dad had shared more with her than that one line. He'd told her so much more, more than she  
>wanted to hear, but all that she needed to know. She now had two wrongs to right, and neither<br>would be easy for her to do. She reluctantly picked up her cell phone.

"Just get it over with." She admonished herself out loud.

She pressed the familiar number on speed dial and waited nervously for him to pick up. The sound of  
>his voice for the first time in months almost made her falter in her resolve.<p>

"Kate, are you back?"

"Yeah, I just got back in to town a couple of hours ago. Could you come over? I mean, if you're not busy…with work."

"I'm free, I'll be there in twenty. I've missed you Kate"

"I've missed you too." What else was she going say over the phone, she did miss him…just not enough.

Her hands were shaking as she set the phone down on her coffee table. Her emotions were raw.  
>Her father's revelations about what he'd asked Castle to do had brought back the angry words that<br>she and Castle spat at each other in her apartment. She was angry at herself more than she was at  
>her father but she had lashed out at him anyway. She told him that she was a big girl and that he<br>needed to butt out of her life. She was stunned by his next revelation. It felt like she was the one  
>being shoved against the wall in the hospital corridor, it knocked the breath from her lungs and she<br>found herself struggling to breathe as her father repeated the accusations Josh hurled at Castle.  
>What breath she did find she used to yell at her father to <em>shut up. <em>It was all too much, but he had  
>one more thing to say.<p>

"Rick's a good man Kate, and I know he's important to you, even if you don't want to admit it, but he  
>deserves better than you've given him and if you don't talk to him soon you're going to lose him forever."<p>

She was a master at the art of avoidance and having the truth shoved in her face made her mad. Anger  
>was the only emotion that had comforted her for years. She couldn't deal with any other.<p>

"_Just go!"_

She needed to apologize…to both of them. Her dad would accept it, he loved her unconditionally, and she  
>knew that…but what about Castle? Not a day went by since waking up in the hospital that she didn't see<br>his tears, hear him plead with her to stay with him and confess his love. His admission as she lay in hisarms  
>surprised her more than the fact that she was dying. She wanted to reply, but all that came out was a tear<br>as darkness obscured his face. Death had come so easy. So why did it have to be so hard for her to live?


End file.
